Book Markers 07.26.12

“All My Georgias”
Living history will walk through the East Hampton Library’s heavy wooden door on Saturday when Redjeb Jordania of Springs arrives to read from his new memoir, “All My Georgias.” His father was the first president of Georgia. In 1921 his family and the entire government fled to France, where Mr. Jordania was born, to escape the Soviet occupation.
The book is broken into 12 true tales that together tell the story of Mr. Jordania’s eventful life in the 20th century. Recounted are scenes from the Georgian colony of émigrés in Paris, family life, the persistence of culture in wartime (one music lesson is conducted while German bombs fall), and a close call with a K.G.B. agent. He at last returned to Georgia in 1990, going on to see the country regain its independence.
The reading starts at 3 p.m. The library has requested registration in advance with the reference desk.

Safina All Over
What’s it like to take a writing workshop with one of the country’s foremost nature writers? A chance to find out will present itself tomorrow from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Canio’s Books in Sag Harbor, when the shop’s Cultural Cafe continues its masters workshop series with Carl Safina. A small group and an intimate setting have been promised. Registration in advance is a must.
A MacArthur fellow and founder of the Blue Ocean Institute in Cold Spring Harbor, Mr. Safina is the author, most recently, of “The View From Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World,” Lazy Point being on Napeague and that view being out his back window. It won an Orion Book Award not long ago. His other books include “Song for the Blue Ocean” and “A Sea in Flames: The Deepwater Horizon Oil Blowout.”
Mr. Safina, by the way, will be the Authors After Hours guest at the Amagansett Library on Saturday at 6 p.m., reading from “The View From Lazy Point.”

Authors Night Nears
Tickets have gone on sale for Authors Night at the East Hampton Library on Aug. 11. The benefit for the library brings scores of writers together under a tent, this year at the Gardiner farm at 36 James Lane in East Hampton, where a reception will begin at 5 p.m. with hors d’oeuvres, flowing wine, and no end of books to buy or have signed. Authors on hand will range from Peter Matthiessen to Philip Galanes, from Ali Wentworth to Kati Marton, and Roberts Lipsyte and Klein.
After the reception, at 8 p.m., attendees can repair to dinner parties hosted by writers at various homes here. Tickets to those dinners cost between $100 and $2,500 and are available at the library or online at authorsnight.org.

For the New Review
Two literary heavyweights, Billy Collins and Roger Rosenblatt, will give a reading tomorrow to announce the release of the summer issue of The Southampton Review, produced through Stony Brook Southampton’s M.F.A. program in writing and literature and headed up by Lou Ann Walker.
Mr. Collins — need it be said? — is a former U.S. poet laureate and arguably the country’s most popular poet. Mr. Rosenblatt, who lives in Quogue, is the equally popular author of memoirs (“Making Toast,” “Kayak Morning”) and novels (“Lapham Rising,” “Beet”). The reading, one of the Summer Arts Southampton events that are free and open to the public, starts at 7:30 p.m. in the campus’s Avram Theater.

CMEE Gets Bookish
The Children’s Museum of the East End in Bridgehampton has started a summer book club that meets for readings in the homes of museum members who are also children’s book authors. The next gathering will be on Tuesday at 8 p.m., and the book is “I Never Promised You a Goodie Bag” by Jennifer Gilbert. A $25 donation to CMEE gets you a book. Sign-up is by phone with the museum.